Mahler: Symphony No 3 - review

The recent additions to Jonathan Nott's Mahler cycle with his Bamberg orchestra have included an outstanding account of the Ninth Symphony, but also a much less convincing one of the Second; this new recording of the Third falls between those extremes. Nott's account of the Third's huge opening movement is remarkable for its control and pacing, with every great musical paragraph perfectly placed in the symphonic canvas and every instrumental solo shaped and sculpted in great detail, but the following movements are more hit and miss. The minuet is dragged out in a way that sounds terribly self-indulgent, yet the scherzo is much more objective and sharply etched, while the two vocal movements, with Mihoko Fujimura as the contralto in the fourth, are kept on a very even keel. Everything then hinges on the finale, and with wonderfully refined playing from the Bamberg strings, Nott resists all temptations to make it a tear-jerker but controls it just as unswervingly as he had the great span of music with which the symphony begins.